CALSSIFICATION AND THEORIES OF TECTONIC HAZARD

DISTATSER – A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society involving human, material, economic and environmental losses which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

RISK a community faces from a natural hazard can be calculated from the equation below.

DEVELOPMENT How developed a country is significantly affects how resilient its population is and their capacity to cope with a hazard.

HIGH RISK

  • Their capacity to cope is low.
  • They are quite vulnerable.
  • The hazard is large/ high intensity.

DEGGS MODEL
is a good representation of this concept. If the population is not vulnerable, the hazard will not have a significant effect, thus the event will not be disastrous
Different organisations will define a hazard and disaster differently, based on their interests and what they believe is most important. For example, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) define a disaster as "a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society involving widespread losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope with using its own resources."

HAZARD VS NATURAL DISTATER Hazards should not be confused with natural disasters. A disaster will only occur when a vulnerable population (one that will be significantly disrupted and damaged) is exposed to a hazard

CLARRIFY TECTONIC HAZARD

● Economic cost of the disaster - jobs lost, cost of repairs needed, economic productivity lost. The UN Sendai Framework is an initiative to reduce economic loss due to a disaster, after the huge economic losses during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami.

● You could compare a tectonic disaster to previous events, prediction models or average statistics for that location. Some events may be more severe than the ‘average’ tectonic hazard, due to a series of factors coinciding (e.g. bad weather an recent deforestation will increase the tsunami travelling inland).

● The volume of peop disaster as an event where more than 100 people are affected or more than 10 people die.le affected - The International Disaster Database classifies a

PARKS MODEL
The Park Model is a graphical representation of human responses to hazards. The model shows the steps carried out in the recovery after a hazard, giving a rough indication of time frame.
The model also works as a control line to compare hazards. An extremely catastrophic hazard would have a steeper curve than the average and would have a slower recovery time than the average, for example. This has been indicated by the blue line.

● The steepness of the curve shows how quickly an area deteriorates and recovers.

● The depth of the curve shows the scale of the disaster (i.e. lower the curve, lower the quality of life).

STAGES
Stage 1 - Relief (hours-days)
● Immediate local response - medical aid, search and rescue
● Immediate appeal for foreign aid - the beginnings of global response
Stage 2 - Rehabilitation (days-weeks)
● Services begin to be restored
● Temporary shelters and hospitals set up
● Food and water distributed
● Coordinated foreign aid - peacekeeping forces etc
.Stage 3 - Reconstruction (weeks-years)
● Restoring the area to the same or better quality of life
● Area back to normal - ecosystem restored, crops regrown ● Infrastructure rebuil
t ● Mitigation efforts for future event

PREASURE AND REALSE MODEL PARS
The Pressure and Release Model is used to analyse factors which cause a population to be vulnerable to a hazard. On one side of the model we have the natural hazard itself, and on the other side different factors and processes which increase a population’s vulnerability to the hazard. This vulnerability is often rooted in social processes. These are dynamic and ever changing and are often unrelated to the hazard itself e.g. poverty, poor governance.
The progression of vulnerability is split into three sections. The root causes are often caused by economic, demographic and/or political processes, often affecting large populations or entire countries. Dynamic pressures are local economic or political factors, that can affect a community or organisation and unsafe conditions are the physical conditions that affect an individual (unsafe building, low income, poor health, etc). Therefore, the number of people affected will increase the closer the factor is to the root cause.

VUNRABILITY
● Physical Vulnerability - Individuals live in a hazard-prone area, with little protection naturally or through mitigation.
● Economic Vulnerability - People risk losing their employment, wealth or assets during a hazard. MEDCs tend to be more economically vulnerable than LEDCs.
● Social Vulnerability - Communities are unable to support their disadvantaged or most vulnerable, leaving them at risk to hazards.
● Knowledge Vulnerability - Individuals lack training or warning to know the risks of a hazard or how to safely evacuate. Alternatively, religion and beliefs may limit their understanding of hazards; hazards are an act of God, so individuals don’t mitigate or evacuate (known as fatalist belief).
● Environmental Vulnerability - A community’s risk to a hazard is increased due to high population density in the area.

A lack of infrastructure (such as poor sewage management or water supplies) can worsen the impacts of a hazard, since it is harder to maintain clean living conditions and avoid the spread of disease following a disaster. A lack of infrastructure would be a factor of unsafe living conditions.


However, the lack of infrastructure may be due to rapid urbanisation, where little planning has been taken to carefully construct houses and infrastructure to cope with the rising population; Rapid urbanisation would be the dynamic pressure.


Ultimately, planning and controlling safe population growth is the government’s responsibility. So the root cause of this disaster may be weak governance.

ROOT CAUSE

  • Weak Governance
  • Mismanagement by Industry, NGOs or IGOs
  • High reliance on products easily affected by hazards (local agriculture near to the hazard, imports by air during a volcanic eruption

DYNAMIC PRESSURE

  • lack of training/knowledge in locals - rapid urbanisation
  • poor communication between government and locals - natural environment degraded (mangroves removed, rivers & channels filled with debris)
  • lack of basic services (health, education, police)

UNSAFE LIVING CONDTIONS

  • lack of infrastructure (clean water, sewage removal, electricity)
    • dangerous location of settlements (close to nuclear stations or the natural hazard itself)
    • no warning system for locals - disease and fire can easily spread between households

TECTONIC HAZARD PROFILES A hazard profile compares the physical characteristics which all hazards share. Hazard Profiles can help decision makers when deciding where to allocate the most human and financial resources.
It is easy to measure a single hazard like earthquakes but it is much more difficult to measure multiple hazards or events were secondary hazards are more destructive than the actual event itself.

▪ Frequency – How often it happens

▪ Magnitude – How extensive an area the event could affect

▪ Duration – How long the event lasts

▪ Speed of onset – How much warning time before event occurs

▪ Fatalities - Number of deaths caused

▪ Economic Loss - Value of assets damaged, lack of industry or economic productivity, insurance policies.

▪ Spatial Predictability - The predictability of where would be affected.

EVALUATION
Hazard models are useful, but the unpredictability of hazards makes the models less effective at accurately representing human responses to hazards. It may be useful to ask some questions when evaluating how effective these models are:

● Does the model present hazards currently? Are there any alterations that could be made to account for hazards affected by climate change? Will the model eventually not represent human responses at the time (e.g. could the cycle stop because hazards will occur more frequently than the mitigation strategies will occur)?

● Could the model be less vague/ include more steps that can be applied to all hazards?

● Is there any timeframe? Do the models accurately lay out the time taken for a full response and how this changes due to aspects of the hazard such as intensity?

● Does the model take any aspects of hazards into account such as level of development?

● Can they be applied to every hazard? Are some hazards more complicated and require a more complex model? It may be useful to apply each of your case studies to these models and see how they compare.